1. Field of the Invention
This application relates to sports whistles such as used by referees at sporting events to signal occurrence of a rules infraction or other events. More particularly, it concerns improvements in such sports whistles so that they provide a visual signal in addition to the conventional audio signal.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In many contact type sporting events, e.g., football, soccer, ice-hockey, basketball, etc., a whistle is carried by the referees to be blown as a signal to notify the players and spectators of the occurrence of an infraction of the rules of the game, to call time out or other event. Changes in rules, spectator attendance, media coverage and technology have rendered these historic referee sport whistles in need of improvement so that they can confront these changes, but without need to introduce a totally new type of signalling device for use by referees. Thus, in order to keep pace with instant replay technology, increased attendance of sporting events by the hearing impaired, etc., there exists a need for the conventional referee whistle to provide a visual signal in addition to its typical audio signal.
By way of example, the National Hockey League permits the use of instant replay technology to assist referees to call certain plays correctly. One permissible instance is for the determination as to whether a goal has been scored or not. If a referee loses sight of the puck, he is instructed to blow his whistle thereby stopping any further play. If the puck is in a goalie's crease, and if, for example, four players also are in the crease scrambling for possession of the puck, often times the referee has to blow his whistle because the sheer number of bodies has blocked the referee's view of the puck. However, on numerous occasions, the puck has managed to elude the sight of the referee and find its way across the goal line and into the net. The question then arises as to whether the goal was scored before or after the referee had blown his whistle. The crowd noise at NHL games can drown out any sound reproduction that might otherwise be audible on an instant replay. So, when checking the video of a play, the official who is in charge of the instant reply, may still be unable to determine if the puck crossed the goal line either before or after the on-ice referee had "sounded" his whistle. Hence, a need exists so that a replay official can "see" that the on-ice referee had blown his whistle after (or before) the puck had crossed the goal line thereby allowing the goal to count (or not allowing it to count if the whistle had been blown before the goal was made). Ear-splitting crowd noise would no longer be a barrier to being able to correctly call the play.
It has previously been known in toy and party items to combine a whistle designed to be blown by a person's mouth with an extension element that visibly extends from the whistle as long as it is blown, e.g., see U.S. Pat. Nos. 530,909 and 532,642. However, as soon as such whistles stop blowing, the extension element in such whistle toys retracts so they do not meet the needs of a visual indicating sports whistle comparable to those provided by this invention.